[metmom]

The thing is, moral law is needed for a well ordered safe society. Morality doesn’t get you the rebirth but is the natural outcome of it. But for those who never experience it, there has to be some check to protect people and society.

Given the choice, I’d rather have the Judeo-Christian morality enforced by a moral government, like we had for at least a couple hundred years, than moral relativism. That will only result in anarchy, as everyone does what’s right in his own eyes. That’s what I fear the libertarian movement will lead.

[Pinkbell]

I completely agree with your assesment of moral relativism. I find it very dangerous to society as there can be no morals or order except that which is mandated by law, but in a libertarian society there would be hardly any laws. I shudder to think of it.

[betty boop]

Given the choice, I’d rather have the Judeo-Christian morality enforced by a moral government, like we had for at least a couple hundred years, than moral relativism. That will only result in anarchy, as everyone does what’s right in his own eyes. That’s what I fear the libertarian movement will lead.

Libertarians are strongly in favor of limited government, and so am I. But you must have some government or you do get anarchy. Sometimes I wonder, though, whether in some libertarian quarters the desire for limited government is related to the same desire to get "quit" of God: To obtain for man absolutely unlimited freedom to do whatever he wants without moral constraints being imposed on him "from the outside."

But such a desire is nutz to me; it represents a total flight from reality.... It also is a repudiation of essential human nature...which ab ovo necessarily has a social dimension.

The fact is unrestrained individuality -- that is, a focus on the individual without regard to his participation in (and obligations to) the wider civil society -- can easily lead to anarchy. We've recently been chatting on another thread about Niels Bohr's complementarity principle, which states that two seemingly mutually-exclusive things can often be complementary and shed light on each other, that one is not necessarily "right" at the expense of the other being "wrong." It seems to me the federal Constitution ever seeks to justly reconcile a fundamental complementarity:

Early in the eighteenth century a philosophical statesman, the Marquess of Halifax, had seen a duality in the object of constitutional law to keep the balance "between the excess of unbounded power and the extravagance of liberty not enough restrained." -- R. V. Jones, in Niels Bohr: A Centenary Volume, 1985

Finding that balance has been the great distinction and achievement of American political order. The difficulty -- the challenge -- is to maintain that proper balance....

Thank you so much for writing, metmom!